I rented the movies "Down with Love" and "Simone" last week. DWL was not wonderful but
pretty good. Simone was excellent, though, I thought. The digital effects were really cool!
Wednesday, July 21
New pictures have been put up.
It keeps getting hotter and hotter. It was a record 104 degrees yesterday in Tokyo and
so far has hit 105 today in Kofu City (west of Tokyo). It's about 97 here in Okayama.
Even with my airconditioning on, I woke up a couple times last night due to the heat.
A new teacher from Hawaii arrived on Sunday; she'll be here through the first week of
September. So finally I am done with overtime! It will be nice to have a full three days
off a week again. I am really looking forward to next month, as I only work 11 days the
whole month! :-) Due to renovation at our school, I have two more days off than originally
planned.
Only took me a year and a half, ha ha, but I just discovered the other day that there is
a free bicycle pump at the supermarket nearby. So many times, I've either paid to have my tires
pumped or not pumped them at all and ridden around on near-flat tires. Stupid! Will have to
take my other two bikes back there tonight so that the new teacher can use one.
Friday, July 16
Long time, no write...June and the first week of July were insanely busy for me. Things
are calming down now, fortunately. Most of the business was a good kind of busy, though.
On June 20, I went to Tokyo Disneyland! It was smaller than I remember the Florida one
being, but it was still fun. We waited an hour to ride THunder mountain (which was a
disappointment, IMO), but the other rides were about a 20-30 wait each, which wasn't so
bad. My fav was Space Mountain 'cause it's so fast. :-) The park was fairly crowded, but
since it was really windy that day, two parades and the fireworks at night were canceled.
The flight back to Okayama the next day was pretty turbulent and a bit nerve-racking 'cause
a typhoon was sweeping across Japan! A lot of flights were canceled and Kiza and I thought
about taking the shinkansen back, but it was a good thing we didn't, because a little past
Nagoya, the roof of a "love hotel" blew off onto the train tracks and delayed or canceled
trains for hours. Only in Japan...:-)
That Wednesday, June 23, I went to Osaka to see my friend Hiroko. We went to the Hard Rock
Cafe, which I hadn't known existed in Osaka! It was exactly like other HRCs I've been to -
very American-like and the food was good but quite expensive. After eating, we walked over
to the Dotombori area and sang karaoke for a bit. :)
The next day, took the shinkansen and a total of FIVE local trains to Kawagoe (about 40 minutes
north of Tokyo) to see my friends and their young daughter, who is almost two. They'd
recently moved into a fabulous new house; it was so nice! We didn't do anything too exciting,
but it was nice to just talk to them (hadn't seen them in 14 months) and play with their
daughter.
That weekend, the 26th and 27th, were the most exciting days! I went to the "Dreams on Ice"
figure skating shows in Yokohama as a representative of two US magazines. Being on the media
side of things was so much more fun than being a spectator! :-) I got to sit in the press seats
to take pictures/notes and I interviewed five people, including three Olympic champions! It
was like a dream come true, and I was so pleased with how friendly all the skaters were to me.
A photo and one of my articles has already been published at Blades
on Ice's
website, and my two major articles are due to appear in their magazine in the Sept. issue.
I'm very excited! It was really interesting doing the interviews and writing the articles, so
I hope to do more this year.
Now I'm just trying to keep cool in this 90-95 degree heat we've been having...